iPods are everywhere, everyone loves them, and that’s fine with me. But don’t ever think that I’ll miss an opportunity to point out to someone who recently purchased an iPod that there are many digital music players out there and that people really need to do some research on the various offerings, before buying a player simply because it’s hip and the current media darling. Note that I’ve purposefully used the term digital music player – MP3 player seems a little misleading to me. Many, if not all of the digital music players out there support many different audio codecs in addition to MP3, including AAC, WMA, FLAC, and my personal favorite, Vorbis.
People often ask me if I have an iPod. I quickly say no and tell them I have an iRiver IFP-790. This usually evokes the “you mean… there are music players other than the iPod – OH THE HUMANITY!” look. Yes, there are other music players other than an iPod. And you know what? They are damn good – possibly even better. Did you know there are digital music players out there that let you listen to FM radio, record line-in input or voice, AND support more music formats, all in the same package? Interestingly, these are all features that are not available on an iPod.
I’ve had my iRiver for about two years now, and I’m still very happy with it. It’s storage capacity is only 256MB, but this has been sufficient for me. And, I’ve recently discovered Rockbox, and open source jukebox firmware that will likely breathe new life into my slightly-dated player by adding support for AAC and other goodies. This firmware, you may be interested to know, also adds Vorbis support to the iPod.
So what’s the point of this post? It’s not supposed to be an iPod flame – just a friendly reminder that there are many digital music players out there and that an iPod isn’t necessarily the best just because it has the most cachet.
